Heirloom Vegetables For Your Garden

More and more seed companies are advertising and successfully selling heirloom vegetable seeds to today’s gardeners. Heirloom seeds normally lead to richer flavored vegetables which our great-grandparents used to enjoy in the years prior to modern hybrid seeds. Of course, modern hybrid vegetables are still nutritious, quite edible, and easier to grow compared to heirloom vegetables. Actually, these advantages were the motivation which led to the development of hybrid seeds in the first place. Although, just as with homemade bread and handcrafted furniture, many people have decided that the extra attention that these vegetables call for is warranted by the old-fashioned taste and the tactile connection to our past.  Be sure to check out the Black & Decker CMM1200 Cordless Electric Mower.

By and large, the vegetable seeds which are designated heirloom seeds are required to show two characteristics. They have to be open-pollinated, and the variety ought to be no less than 50 years old. While many seeds now being sold in catalogs or stores might meet one of the aforementioned requirements, they really have to meet both prerequisites for an honest seed retailer to describe them as Heirloom.  Another good model is the Black & Decker MM875 Mulching Mower.

The majority of seeds available right now are called Hybrids. A hybrid is a plant which is the product of cross-pollinating two different varieties. The problem people have with hybrids is, they can’t replicate themselves. If you plant these seeds, then harvest the seeds from the hybrid plants, that next generation of seeds will merely contain the characteristics of one of its genetic parents. Perhaps an oversimplified illustration would help. If certain seeds produce hybrid plants which were a combination of red peppers and yellow peppers, the hybrid could create orange peppers. If you remove the seeds from these peppers and plant them, the resulting plants might just offer either green or yellow peppers. 

Heirloom seeds, on the other hand, are open-pollinated varieties. Consequently, if you recover seeds from this type of plants, the second generation plants are going to grow “true to type”, meaning that the identical vegetable will be grown generation after generation. The capability of heirloom vegetables to copy themselves is the means by which these varieties have continued producing for so many years.

While the fifty year goal for recognizing the  heirloom varieties will probably seem arbitrary, the era which followed the Second World War represents the commencement of when American seed companies were developing and selling the more durable hybrid vegetable seeds. Modern gardeners have developed a new appreciation  for the old fashioned vegetable varieties, though, and the seed companies have answered that need by dedicating increasing amounts of advertizing space to Heirloom varieties.

Please do not conclude that hybrid vegetables are inherently unhealthy. The technology which resulted in today’s hybrid vegetables has produced disease and drought resistance and higher yields in today’s agriculture, a situation which has worldwide implications. Heirloom vegetables are appreciated by many home gardeners, however, thanks to their texture and flavor, and their penchant to bring back memories of Grandma’s tomato soup.

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